Preview: Blessed Adrian Fortescue and His Maxims

Blessed Adrian Fortescue, another one of Henry VIII's best friends (like St. Thomas More), was executed sometime in early July, 1539 (either July 8 or 9 or 10). He was a Knight of the Realm, a Knight of Malta, and a Dominican Tertiary. On Monday, September 11, we'll continue our series of Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors gathered by Father Henry Sebastian Bowden. Please note that the book is still available--as of today--for only $10.00 from the publisher!

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here.

The website of the Dominican Friars of England, Ireland, and Scotland provides this background of his life and times:

Like his forebears, Adrian served King Henry VIII in his ambitious military campaigns. He helped to rout the French the Battle of Spurs in 1513, and fought again in 1523. King Henry rewarded his support and in 1520 invited him to the splendorous Field of the Cloth of Gold where Henry famously wrestled with the King of France. Closer to home, Sir Adrian was made a Justice of the Peace of the county of Oxfordshire. In this period of history, royal favour could also take more peculiar forms. Sir Adrian had the dubious honour of being made a Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, forerunner to the august body now known as the Privy Council.

In addition to being an assiduous servant of the Crown, Sir Adrian was evidently also a man of strong religious conviction and charity. His accounts reveal a number of benefactions to clergy and religious foundations. In 1532, he became a Knight of Devotion in the Order of Malta. The following year in July of 1533, he was admitted as a Dominican Tertiary at Blackfriars, Oxford, which he would visit from Stonor. But he also had a strong association with the Dominican Priory in London. His lodgings in the capital were in the precincts of the Blackfriars, close to the present eponymous tube station.

Sir Adrian was married twice and had children, so like St. Thomas More, he lived an active life as a Catholic layman, as a family man, with great devotion to his faith.

In the Catholic Encyclopedia, J.H. Pollen demonstrates the injustice of his martyrdom, as he was arrested, imprisoned, and included in a Bill of Attainder, without trial or evidence:

All of a sudden this quiet, worthy gentleman was overwhelmed by some unexplained whim of the Tudor tyrant. On 29 August, 1534, he was put under arrest, no one knows why, but released after some months. On 3 February, 1539, he was arrested a second time and sent to the Tower. In April he was condemned untried by an act of attainder; in July he was beheaded. No specific act of treason was alleged against him, but only in general "sedition and refusing allegiance". The attainder, however, went on to decree death against Cardinal Pole and several others because they "adhered themselves to the Bishop of Rome". Catholic tradition was always held that Sir Adrian died for the same cause, and modern Protestant critics have come to the same conclusion. His cultus has always flourished among the Knights of St. John, and he was beatified by Leo XIII in 1895.

Father Bowden does not highlight Blessed Adrian Fortescue's martyrdom, but instead provides a series of maxims he collected. (Pollen describes them thus: "He collected and signed several lists of proverbs and wise saws, which, though not very brilliant, are never offensive or coarse, always sane, and sometimes rise to a high moral or religious level.") Bowden uses the titles "A Martyr's Maxims (1) and (2)" with the verses, "She conducted the just, when he fled from his brother's wrath, through the right ways" (Wisdom 10:10) and "But the wisdom, that is from above, first indeed is chaste." (James 3:17).

Among the maxims:

Above all things love God with all thy heart.

Desire His honour more than the health of thine own soul.

Take heed with all diligence to purge and cleanse thy mind with oft Confession, and raise thy desire or lust from earthly things.

Be you houseled (that is receive Holy Communion) with entire devotion.

Pray often.

Also enforce thee to set thy house at quietness.

Resort to God every hour.

Advance not thy words or deeds by any pride.

Be pitiful to poor folk and help them to thy power, for then thou shalt greatly please God.

Give fair language to all persons, and especially to the poor and needy.

Also be diligent in giving of alms.

In prosperity be meek of heart, and in adversity patient.

And pray continually to God that you may do what is His pleasure.

Neither Father Bowden nor J.H. Pollen indicate where Blessed Adrian Fortescue wrote down these maxims, but this website indicates it was in his Book of Hours; further it notes that the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford has another book of Fortescue's containing proverbs which also includes a book written by his great-uncle John Fortescue, On Absolute and Limited Monarchy (dangerous reading while King Henry VIII was on the throne!), and passages from Langland's Piers Plowman!

The collection and use of these proverbs served as good preparation for the trials and martyrdom Blessed Adrian Fortescue would endure, imprisoned, found guilty without trial, and beheaded. Henry VIII also suppressed the Knights of St. John and seized their properties in England.

Blessed Adrian Fortescue, pray for us!